Want stimulus check by year-end? Deadline's today

Want stimulus check by year-end? Today's deadline

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Thousands of coastal residents still piecing their lives back together after Hurricane Ike will have to move fast if they want to claim some cash before the end of the year.

The Internal Revenue Service extended tax filing and payment deadlines until Jan. 5 for all people living in Texas' Ike-damaged counties — with one exception.

The nearly 1 million Texans who received the automatic six-month extension for filing their tax returns must turn in their paperwork today if they want to get an economic stimulus check by year's end.

If you wait until Jan. 5, as is the right of Hurricane Ike victims under a law passed by Congress and signed by the president, you will have to wait to get the money as a tax credit when you file your 2008 income tax return.

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"If you need the money before the end of this calendar year, you have to meet that Oct. 15 deadline," said Larry Wright, an IRS spokesman in Oakland, Calif.

That's also true for those who don't normally file a tax return because their income levels do not require them to do so. Many of those folks receive Social Security and/or veterans' benefits.

In Harris County alone, there are 43,359 Social Security and veterans' benefits recipients likely eligible for the stimulus checks but have not yet filed a return in order to get them. An additional 17,281 live in Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston and Montgomery counties.

The reason for the rush?

The law that created the economic stimulus program states that the IRS can not distribute payments after Dec. 31. To make sure the agency could process all the requests by that deadline, it set Oct. 15 as the final deadline to get the check. It would take an act of Congress to extend that deadline for Hurricane Ike victims.

"We raised that question as to whether or not there would be an extension for hurricane victims to get a check past the Oct. 15 deadline," Wright said. "That conversation was held within the Internal Revenue Service and, as far as I know, there wasn't any discussion with Congress when they worked to put the financial rescue through."

"I'm not surprised it hadn't come up," said U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston. "There are a lot more things on people's minds than having to file their income tax returns."

But Green and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, each said Tuesday that they would work this week to extend the deadline for Hurricane Ike victims.

"Now that you've made me aware of the glitch, it should be easy to fix," Brady said.

Jackson Lee hosted a town hall meeting in Houston on Tuesday night during which IRS officials were scheduled to speak. She said she planned to bring up the conflicting deadlines.

But she said there were many other problems slowing down the financial recovery of people living in hurricane-damaged counties, including today's deadline for hurricane victims to apply for unemployment benefits.

"This is all happening a little too late, but we have to try," she said.